-Caveat Lector- SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/national/45064_jail02.shtml French prisons are 'cradle of jihad' Islamic radicals spread revolutionary tactics Friday, November 2, 2001 By FRANK VIVIANO HEARST NEWSPAPERS PARIS -- The grim 19th century hulk of the Sante penitentiary, set incongruously in one of the Left Bank's most fashionable quarters, is where France has incarcerated most of the Islamic radicals implicated in terrorist acts here in the past decade. Over the same period, according to inmates and officials, the Sante and other French prisons have become prime training grounds in religious extremism, with thousands of inmates indoctrinated in the principles of a holy war against "the Western powers and the Jews who manipulate them," in the words of one pamphlet circulating behind prison walls. More than half of France's 45,000 penitentiary inmates are Muslim, more than six times the proportion of Muslims in France's overall population. The nation's prisons "have become the cradle of the future jihad," one inmate told the Paris-based daily Le Monde. "The extremists have very quickly acquired a huge influence over other prisoners," said David Schots, associate director of the Villefranche prison in the Rhone Valley, and one of the few officials willing to speak on the record. The revelations come on the heels of recent arrests of French citizens and residents, including many convicts. They highlight the importance of France in the European recruitment operations of groups tied to Osama bin Lad en's al-Qaida network. According to sources in the prison guards' union, extremist detainees have built what amounts to an extensive and highly organized "terrorist university" behind bars, using smuggled tapes, books and pamphlets that preach the fiercely anti-Western and anti-Semitic gospel of al-Qaida. Some inmates claim to have been offered instruction in the manufacture of homemade mines, bombs, detonators and fuses. Instructors include members of the Armed Islamic Group or GIA, which has waged a war against the Algerian government that has taken more than 100,000 lives in since 1990. The GIA has been named by Washington as a major te rrorist group, with close links to al-Qaida. Algerians were prominent among the thousands of "Arab Afghans" who, like bin Laden, joined the CIA-supported war to expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in the 1980s. French penal officials, while largely refusing to comment publicly on the problem, concede that its growth has led to frequent transfers of "troublemakers" from one prison to another. Accounts from inmates suggest that the policy's unintended effect has been to spread extremist influence more broadly throughout the penitentiary system. In 1992, one inmate told Le Monde, he encountered just a few prisoners vaguely interested in discussing Islam, "but no proselytizing in the true sense of the word." One year later, he said, he found "extremists who spent their time trying to convert the maximum number of prisoners, proselytizing at a runaway pace." On Sept. 28, a trial opened in Paris for 29 Algerians and French-Algerians charged with European-wide trafficking in arms, falsified papers and stolen cars. They are suspected of belonging to the Egyptian-founded Takfir w al-Hejira ("Anathema and Exile") an extremist movement reportedly allied with al-Qaida. Another French-Algerian, Djamel Beghal, 35, was arrested in July in Dubai on suspicion of terrorist activities, and has since provided information to French intelligence agents about a European network allegedly targeting U.S. interests abroad, among them the U.S. Embassy in Paris. The French secret services, whose experience with violent Islamic movements dates back to a series of fatal bombings in the Paris streets and subways between 1986 and 1996, have assembled one of Europe's most sophisticate d databanks on fundamentalist militants, their cells and networks. The government of President Jacques Chirac has made it clear that its intelligence agents are actively engaged in the U.S.-led war on terrorism. On Monday, Gen. Jean-Pierre Kelch, commander of the French army, hinted that French special forces may also be involved in intelligence gathering on the ground in Afghanistan. But France's war against extremism behind bars is proving difficult to pursue. Apart from the transfers and efforts to prevent the smuggling of banned books and tapes, prison authorities are hamstrung by a law guaranteeing that "each detainee must be able to satisfy the demands of his religious, moral or spiritual life." One reason for the explosive growth of prison extremism, say mainstream Islamic leaders here, is that control over such practices is exercised almost entirely by the prisoners themselves -- and increasingly by those with a history of militant violence. For the approximately 25,000 Muslim penitentiary inmates in France, there are currently 44 government-appointed Islamic prison chaplains, only four of them working full time. � 1998-2001 Seattle Post-Intelligencer ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men. Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all. Then accept it and live up to it." The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutta + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Universal Declaration of Human Rights + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." --- Ernest Hemingway
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